Wednesday, May 8, 2013

NetApp: Disabling snapshot for a volume on Data OnTAP

This is one of those things that isn't always very obvious. Sometimes, you need to disable snapshots for a volume.

Why in the world would someone want to disable a perfectly good feature of NetApp NAS Storage? Server/data migration for one. Disabling it temporarily will prevent the volume from filling up the snapshot directory. Maybe your volume doesn't need snapshots (data always changing, and can not be recoverable even with snapshots- such as oracle data dirs, in which case snapshots are useless).
You have to perform simple but important tasks. If your volume has a schedule, turn it off.